Angels or Demons? Will CERN's LHC Experiments Point to the Existence of Another Universe?

Could the elusive Higgs boson finally be in sight? Earlier this summer, physicist Tommaso Dorigo of the University of Padua wrote about talk of a tentative hint of the Higgs at the Tevatron, a particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

"It reached my ear, from two different, possibly independent sources, that an experiment at the Tevatron is about to release some evidence of a light Higgs boson signal. Some say a three-sigma effect, others do not make explicit claims but talk of a unexpected result," wrote Dorigo.

The blog post was low on detail but if the "three-sigma" signature - a reference to the statistical certainty of the rumoured result - turns out to be real, it will be one of the great discoveries in the history of science.

The Higgs, sometimes called the "God particle", was proposed to explain why particles have mass. It is the only particle in the standard model of particle physics that hasn't been found. Spotting it would confirm the theory, while ruling it out would point the way to more exotic, new theories.

At full throttle, the LHC could provide scientists with new insights into the nature of mass, dark matter and the origins of the universe. But many of them hope that instead of confirming string theory, dark energy, the Higgs-Boson, etc. — something entirely unexpected will emerge from the CERN-run experiment, for example the detection of certain types of supersymmetric particles, that could be seen as what physicist Michio Kaku calls, “signals from the 11th dimension.”

The detection of certain types of supersymmetric particles, aka sparticles, could be seen as what physicist Michio Kaku calls, “signals from the 11th dimension.”

Several of the world's leading cosmologists, Michio Kaku a prime example, believe that we are but one of many universes. As yet, as we know, there is no evidence of there being other universes out there. Some versions of this theory suggest that there is at least one other universe very close to our own, separated perhaps bu a membrane as little as a millimeter away, which, if true, could be detectable by some energy or forces such as gravity leaking through.In fact, as predicted by brane theorists, this "leakage" could be responsible for the production of dark energy from a parallel universe, its influence felt in our own through its gravitational pull.

Many of the multiple universe proponents are awaiting eagerly for the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to smash the basic components of the universe together at near the speed of light along a 84-kilometer-long underground racetrack, causing an awesomely high energy reaction similar to the temperatures involved at the Big Bang and spew out the secrets to the cosmos. More exciting than the discovery of Higgs Boson, who's function is giving mass to the particles of matter, could be the possible creation of tiny, particle-sized black holes. Real data from these experiments will rewrite the theorists' Guide to the Quantum Universe.

According to current physics these nano black holes could not be created at the energy levels the LHC is capable of producing. They could only be created if a parallel universe actually exists, providing the extra gravitation needed to generate the nano black holes.

The Tevatron has been making steady progress in the hunt for the standard model Higgs. Over the years, data collected by the DZero and CDF experiments at the collider have whittled down the window of possible masses where the particle might be found. Last year, Tevatron physicists predicted that they'd have enough data by early 2011 to either find or rule out the Higgs and estimated they have a 50% chance of spotting it by the end of 2010.

The Large Hadron Collider set a new record for the creation of energetic particle beams this spring. The particle accelerator, which surpassed Fermilab’s Tevatron in December, smashed its own record, charging particles to 3.48 trillion electron volts, or three times the energy of any beam ever created by human beings and just under half the LHC’s proposed maximum capabilities.

“Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC’s overall design, and the improvements we’ve made since the breakdown in September 2008,” said CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology Steve Myers in a press release. “And it’s a great credit to the patience and dedication of the LHC team.”